“Oh do, please Father, tell us about when you were a boy!”
Phillip’s face now had light in it; so had the face of Hetty, auroral almost with the pristine happiness, thoughtless and irresponsible, of childhood.
“Tell us about the tame partridges, Father, you know, when your Father’s boots were the chicks’ foster parents, after their mother’s head was cut off in the hay field!”
“Ah, that was a wonderful sight, to be sure! Hearing my Father’s voice on the lawn below his sanctum, where they had been left asleep on a rug, suddenly a dozen little partridges, no bigger than sparrows, would all fly together through the open window, and settle around his feet. Well, that was a very long time ago now. Let me see, it was—yes, all of thirty-four years ago, when I was a boy then, younger than Phillip is now.”
“How old are you now, Dads?”
“Ah, my gipsy, that’s a secret—but I will give you one hint—I am as old as my tongue, and a little older than my teeth! How old does that make me, do you think?”
“I know, forty-two, Father.”
“How the dickens did you know that, my boy?”
“I saw it written inside that prize you won at school, Father, ‘The Life and Explorations of Captain Cook’.”
“Did you, b’jabers! You know too much, for a small boy!”
“You lent it to me, Father.”
“Oh, I see. Well now, we must not waste this sunshine, Phillip. Is your bicycle in order—oiled, tyres pumped, chain lubricated, as I told you?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Waterproof cape rolled under the pillion, tied to the forks?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Well, I hope to show you some of my especial places in the north-west corner of the county of Kent, where you were born, my boy, though whether that makes you a Man of Kent I’m blest if I know! I fancy there is a line somewhere, one side of which one is a Kentishman, the other side, a Man of Kent. There are rapid changes taking place now in the world everywhere today, and by the time you are a man, probably all where we are going will be built over, and unrecognisable; and I, for one, think that will be a pity.”
“Yes, it will,” agreed Phillip, thinking of old Antill and the Backfield.
Chapter 6
BICYCLES AND BLUEBELLS
“TRAFFIC on the roads today is quite different from what it used to be,” said Richard, as, watched by mother and the two girls, they stood outside the house, ready to set off on their cycle ride together. “Now pay attention, please. You must be most careful to keep in close to the left of the road. Follow me, do as I do, and you will be all right. And do not forget to hold out your hand before you turn a corner, to give any following cyclist, or driver of any vehicle behind you, ample warning of your intentions. This is a courtesy to other travellers, as well as a precaution for your own safety. One slip, and you may very easily find yourself a cripple for life, if nothing worse!”
“I know, Father.”
“Oh you do, do you? And how do you know, may I enquire?”
“You told me before, Father.”
“Well then, now I tell you again, my boy!”
“Yes, Father.”
“I am sure Phillip will be very careful, dear,” remarked Hetty.
Phillip thought Father’s face was rather like that of a thin lion in the Zoo as he looked at Mother, and said, “Why are you interfering between me and the boy, may I ask? Please do not interfere. It confuses the boy.”
“Yes dear, of course, naturally.”
Hetty smiled—almost a hopeless smile—as she thought with a little inward tremor, what a pity it was that so seldom did Dickie approve of what she said, to try and help——. Then she saw the face of Mrs. Bigge next door, gazing with nods and smiles between her lace curtains. Hetty waved. Mrs. Bigge waved back.
Richard turned, and raised his cap. Thereupon Mrs. Bigge disappeared; she was hurrying to her front door. Mrs. Bigge was always ready to pop out and give a smile and a kindly word to her neighbours.
“You are always coming between the boy and me,” sighed Richard, his tone between exasperation and complaint.
The truth was that he never meant to be irritable or carping with his wife. In his opinion it was her nervous attitude which was invariably the cause of upset between them. It had been so before the boy arrived; it was so now that he was growing up. Hetty, he considered, was a bit of a noodle at the best of times, and a negative influence as far as any real progress with the boy was concerned. In what had her solicitous over-care for the boy, during the thirteen years of his life so far, resulted? He was cowardly, untruthful, and a bit of a namby-pamby—all because he had been his mother’s darling. And how did he repay her, for her constant attention to his precious little person? By being a little bully, as he had good reason to know, as soon as his own back was turned. He had his friend Peter Wallace to do his fighting for him: ah, he knew, he knew! Phillip bullied his sisters as well, lording it over all three of them when he, Richard, was out of the house. That was what happened with a doting mother who pandered to her precious little pet’s every whim and pleasure.
“Well, it’s time to be off now, if we are to get anywhere at all,” announced Richard, as the door of “Montrose” opened, and Mrs. Bigge trotted past the little border of lobelia, daisy, and primula, edged with white marmoreal stones, to her gate.
“Have a happy time, Mr. Maddison! Give my love to the country! Enjoy yourself, Phillip!” she called out, as, with caps raised again, father and son set off down the road, wheeling their cycles.
Hillside Road was considered by Richard to be unsuitable for riding upon, chiefly owing to its flints. When alone, Phillip always rode down, to swoop round the corner; but now he followed Father sedately.
At the corner of Charlotte Road Richard prepared to mount his Sunbeam. “Follow me, Phillip. Keep both brakes on, old chap, down the hill. And don’t forget to keep well into the left, as I told you, and do as I do.”
“Yes, Father.”
Thereupon Richard put one brown, single-strapped leather cycling shoe on the step projecting from the hub of his rear wheel; grasped the grips of his handle-bars firmly; pushed off with the right foot, and then, rising almost horizontally along the length of his Norfolk jacketed and knickerbockered body, adjusted himself to saddle and rubber pedal: a familiar sight to many who lived in the flats. It was almost a ceremony when Mr. Maddison mounted his all-black Sunbeam with the Little Oil Bath.
Phillip’s bike was a second-hand Murrage’s Boy’s Imperial Model, costing two pounds nineteen and six when new. He had not had it long. Richard had chosen and approved it from a second-hand shop near Wakenham station, priced thirty shillings. Phillip had paid for it out of his scholarship grant of eight pounds a year. It had a fairly small gear, 68, which meant much pedalling to keep up with Father when the Sunbeam was in top gear with a following wind; the brakes, of the long lever type, shuddered as he put them both on; the front mudguard rattled, the bell was dented, making it cluck when you tried to ring it; still it was a bike, and would do until he bought a new one, with a 3-speed Sturmey-Archer gear, like Father’s.
It took Phillip several false starts before finally he dared to throw his leg over the saddle. And to his relief, the vault into the saddle came off, without him squashing his nackers, as he had dreaded doing. In some exhilaration, he thought he would try riding with his hands off; but a sudden swoop towards the red pillar-box outside Peter Wallace’s house made him clutch the handlebars, in time to avert a crash. Phew! that was a near one. Father was already round the corner.
*
Richard alighted on the humped bridge over both the railway station and the Randisbourne brook beyond, and looked back, waiting for sight of Phillip. He waited until the boy was riding up the slope, and then mounted again, to free-wheel down past the laundry on the lower side of the bridge, past the Randiswell Baths, the Police Station, the Fire Station with its red doors and new motor engine gleaming with paint and brass
, at the corner of the High Street. Holding out his right arm, almost with the rigidity of a wooden railway signal, to indicate to following traffic—in other words Phillip, who must be given a good example in such matters—Richard turned to the right, and crossing over the tram-lines, rode parallel to the kerb-stone, about a yard from it, which he considered to be a proper distance.
*
The new chocolate-and-yellow electric trams of the London County Council now ran through the High Street of the Borough as far as Fordesmill. Many familiar trees had vanished during the laying of the steel rails; Caroline and Georgian inns, weather-boarded cottages and houses, long part of the scene of Richard’s life as he cycled out into the country, were in process of being pulled down, to be replaced by ugly, modern buildings. Ah well!
However, the surface of the road was a decided improvement. Smooth wooden blocks, saturated in creosote, were far superior to the old grey stone metalling, the laying of which had been so laborious—first the digging up of the old surface, then the spreading of cartloads of granite stones, followed by crushing with steam-roller, watering with cart, more crushing and more watering, while the unemployed, temporarily in work, dilatorily brushed, with long-handled brooms, the grey liquid upon the flattened surface. Did the grey mud thus created bind the surface together? Richard doubted it. The result had looked very nice immediately afterwards, no doubt—level, grey, and shining—but the mud so created worked up through the stones when it rained, making the surface slippery and treacherous. Waggon-wheels in winter increased the mud; and then in summer up it all went in dust, behind beastly motorcars driven by road-hogs who had no consideration whatsoever for others upon the road. The trap beyond Fordesmill, where hidden police waited with stop-watches, had caught a good many exceeding twenty miles an hour, and jolly well serve them right, too!
At this point in his thinking, Richard decided to dismount, and give Phillip the benefit of his advice. He held up his arm—a rigid signa—several seconds before reversing the former process of mounting. Phillip stopped by lifting his leg over the saddle, and gliding up, his weight on one pedal, the brakes of the Imperial Model shuddering on rusty rims.
“In this coming age of the motorcar there is a further danger I must warn you of, Phillip,” said Richard, “and that is the danger of skidding in the tramlines. This applies also to the condition of the new wood blocks after rain. Both are treacherous. You must always cross tramlines boldly, at a wide angle, to avoid catching your front wheel in them, and taking a toss; but always make sure, before you do so, that the road is clear behind.”
“Yes, Father.”
“We must expect April showers at this season of the year.”
“I’ve got my cycling cape, Father. I don’t mind a bit of wet.”
“Still, we must look after you, you know, old chap. Can’t have you getting rheumatism at your age.”
Phillip had had a touch of rheumatic fever as a child. This was supposed to be the cause of his comparative lack of growth.
They remounted. Soon father, followed by son, had passed the Bull at Fordesmill, the tram-terminus, and were upon the main road, of pot-holed metalling and drying grey mud. In front, round the curve, was the police trap for motorcars. Phillip looked for policemen hiding behind garden fences with stop-watches, but he saw nothing. Then they were past the houses, in country with cornfields on one side, and meadows on the other, beyond tall elms lining both sides of the road.
Behind Phillip, thundering along, was one of the new white steam-omnibuses. He kept well in to the left, hoping that Father would go faster, for it was possible to race a steamer, at least to keep them behind; but Father went on steadily as before. Phillip trembled as the hissing monster, bright fire blazing under its bonnet, roared past, its solid tyres bumping into the pot-holes and splaying out streaks of liquid mud. He tried to keep up with it as it drew away, but with Father in front, it was hopeless. People were riding inside, and on the open top, straw hats on heads.
Father said, when they stopped later on at Cutler’s Pond, that when the bus had passed it was probably exceeding the speed limit of twelve miles an hour.
“Beastly things, I wish they had never been invented.”
“Hear hear,” agreed Phillip.
Cutler’s Pond was a familiar scene, with its moorhens, little island with willows, and a cherry tree now in blossom upon it; and mud-bubbles rising up where eels moved unseen. Phillip and his sisters had walked there with Father on many a Sunday morning, never tired of the story of how Father had once seen, with Mother, a monster trout under the road bridge, on the day before he, Phillip, was born. They had always looked over, hoping to see a trout; and Phillip did so today; but there was nothing, as usual, beyond sticklebacks.
“Now I will take you to one of my special places, Phillip.”
They turned back the way they had come, and repassing a big house beside the road, with a high wall round its courtyard, cycled up the lane beyond.
At a bend in the lane, with some woods in front, Richard dismounted.
“This,” he said, “is Whitefoot Lane. It has been for me a veritable oasis. You would think you were in the real country higher up, with the arable and the strips of woodland on either side. I will show you, farther on, the keeper’s cottage where your Mother and I spent our honeymoon—let me see, it was in eighteen ninety-three, you were born in ’ninety-five—how old are you, just turned of thirteen, yes”—said Richard, working backwards—“it will be fifteen years ago, this coming November, that we were married. It was a hole and corner business, but there were reasons for it, I am sorry to say.”
Richard consulted his watch.
“H’m, perhaps we had better give it a miss today. We want to make the most of the afternoon, don’t we? Very well then, we’ll turn back now, and make for Reynard’s Common without further ado. We’ll visit the Fish Ponds, and then perhaps we might go on to Green Street Green, and the Salt Box beyond, for tea. That is another favourite spot of mine. The old woman serves the most delicious boiled eggs with brown bread and honey in her parlour. I think perhaps that will be enough for your first day, but bit by bit I’ll show you my particular spots, then when you are older you will be able to visit them by yourself, won’t you, old chap?”
Richard hoped that his son would reply that he would like always to go with him; but Phillip dutifully replied, “Yes, Father.”
*
It was a weary boy who pedalled past Cutler’s Pond some hours later, in the mellow rays of a westering sun gleaming on the water, still following well in to the left of the road. Father and son returned as sedately as they had gone; but now they were being passed by hundreds of other cyclists, in droves and couples, or singly, all hurrying, staring ahead as with tinkling bells, backs bent, faces set as though they were in for a race, they crouched over handlebars, while enormous bunches of bluebells, white clustered ends of long stalks dropping, were tied behind their saddles. Phillip thought that the cyclists’ faces were nearly as white as the stalks where they had been pulled out of the bulbs in the leaf-mould. A few motorbikes went by, drivers with caps the wrong way round, held there by goggles; but for every motorbike or motorcar, there were fifty cyclists and a dozen traps and dog-carts, also seeming to be in a hurry to get back to the streets, alleys, and lodgings of South London, from which they had come.
Some traps stood outside the Bull by the tram-stop. The ponies’ heads were held by ragged boys and men; but the cyclists went on, bells tinkling, swiftly among the gleaming tramlines. Here and there on the wood-paving bluebells lay, scattered amidst bits of paper and orange peel, banana skins and squashed horse dung. Hawkers, barrow boys, men beside wooden stands displaying fruit and vegetables, clothes, fish—the Salvation Army Band playing, shrill voices of women singing to the beat of tambourines—it was the familiar Saturday evening scene. To Phillip, it felt rather dull to be going home again; but he had Ballantyne’s Coral Island out of the Free Library to read, and that wonderful story would last
all through Sunday, thank the Lord.
*
Richard, relaxed in his armchair in the sitting room, read The Daily Trident. Once again his eye glanced over the paragraph of the Cannon Row Police Station; wherein his sister’s name was mentioned with other Suffragettes who had been creating a nuisance. What a mess Dora had made of her life! Why was it? He paused, the paper held unseeing before him. He sighed. Well, it was no good thinking about the past. Nor was it much good thinking about the present. The old days were gone, never to return.
“Phillip.”
“Yes, Father.”
“I hope you will never go into woods belonging to other people, regarding it as a right. Look at the way those hordes of cyclists behave—they go out in their hundreds, nay, thousands, nowadays, and pull up and destroy everything they can lay their hands on. Nothing is sacred to them.”
“Yes, Father.”
“In a few years, at the rate things are going now, there won’t be a bluebell left, or a wood unravaged, for miles around London. I think it is a great pity.”
“So do I, Father.”
“It is all very well for people like this Lloyd George person to talk of equality, and the wickedness of landlords, but if he and men like him have their way, what would be left of the beauty of the countryside?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Are you listening to what I say?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Then please have the courtesy to remove your eyes off your book when I am speaking. What is the book?”
“Coral Island, Father.”
“Ah, that’s a good book. A spiffing yarn, isn’t that what you would call it? A capital story, as my Father would have said.”
“Yes, Father, it’s frightfully exciting!”
“Well,” said Richard, picking up The Daily Trident once more. “I won’t disturb you further.”
After a few moments he put down his paper and said, “There is something on my mind I must say to you, Phillip. I am sorry if I appear unpleasant, but I have my duty to do. You are old enough now to begin to think of fighting your own battles. Do you know what I mean, my boy?”
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